[alexkcd]

The article literally cites a statement put out by a respected medical journal on Feb. 29, 2020, and signed by 27 scientists, "roundly rejecting the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism."

Whatever your recollection of "rank-and-file scientists" attitudes is, the narrative on record is to the contrary.

[lmm]

Rank-and-file scientists tend to stay out of that kind of political statement-making IME, just as when you see a statement from the student union of XZY university condemning whatever that tells you very little about what rank-and-file students of that university are thinking. So I don't see a contradiction here.